• Foreword + Summary
   
  (What followed the original Foreword + Summary was a single, complete list of dates & significant events on those dates. I should have realised — but did not — how easily that would become long & unwieldy for a single post. So, whilst it is simpler for searching to keep everything on one page, for ease of loading I’ve split everything into 5 x 200-year chunks.)

Details:– Early to 1199

This first post covers way more than 200 years, and Nottingham barely features at all (the first direct mention is at 800). However, each army that travelled in the East of England from south to north (or the reverse) would have had to travel by either Nottingham or Derby due to the barrier posed by the Trent + Humber (these rivers cannot be forded below West Bridgford).

[There is one caveat to offer to the last sentence above: the roman road Ermine Street travelled from London to Lincoln to York, and the Humber Bridge did not exist at that time. That suggests that the Roman Army waded across the Humber. Graham Boanas also did that on August 21, 2005, but as someone born in Hull I would not advise it to anyone else.]

• BCE 113: Beginning of Germanic Wars due to the Roman Republic expansion up to the German border.
• BCE 55: August 23: Julius Caesar conducts the 1ˢᵗ Roman invasion of Britain. Eighty transport ships carried two Legions, leaving probably from Portus Itius (Boulogne), and planned to land in Kent, but eventually landed at Pegwell Bay. In his written account, Caesar claimed to have won every skirmish, yet after a few days returned to Gaul. The following year he came again to the same shore with 5 legions, 800 transport ships and (this time) 2,000 cavalry. He penetrated inland, won more battles, obtained hostages and, once again, after a few weeks went back to Gaul & never returned to Britain again.
• BCE 27 January 16: Roman Senate rename Octavian as Augustus (“Emperor”, and the first emperor of what before was the Roman Republic, but is now the Roman Empire).
• CE 43: Invasion & conquest of England by the Roman Empire under Emperor Claudius.
• 64: The 1ˢᵗ Roman Pope St. Linus (#2) is elevated to the Orthodox Roman Papacy.
• 117: The greatest reach of the Roman Empire, achieved during the reign of the Emperor Trajan.
• 286: Emperor Diocletian splits the Roman Empire into West & East, with separate Emperors in each. The split occurs upon the historic Silver Line which runs from the Dead Sea up and through the Balkans and includes the Field of Blackbirds (Pristina). This is the moment when the double-headed Eagle — one head facing West & the other facing East — starts to become a thing. Notice also how, once the Empire forces it’s dirty fingers into Christian affairs (see 313), that the Orthodox Roman Church also splits along the same line into Western Catholic & Eastern Catholic.
• 303: The beginning of the Diocletianic Persecution of Christians across the whole of the Roman Empire (but particularly in the East). It lasted for 10 years.
• 312: Constantine won the battle fought against Maxentius at the Milvian bridge, even though Maxentius’ army was four times as large as his (Maxentius was found dead in the Tiber the next morning). The following year the Edict of Milan was issued, rescinding the former persecuting Diocletian edicts against Christians and granting them full & unlimited toleration. Christianity soon became the official religion of the Roman Empire (see 380).
   
  Constantine was the son of Constantius & Helena (Constantius was the Western Emperor — see 286). His father named him as successor, but when his father died in York, England in 303, even though his army saluted him as Augustus (see BCE 27), Constantine became just one of six pretenders to the sovereignty of the empire. The scenes of contention that followed are likely to be unrivalled in the history of the world.
   
  In the days before the battle in 312 at the Milvian bridge, Constantine and his army knew that Maxentius, as a dutiful heathen, was devoting himself to pagan ceremonies & invoking supernatural powers ready for the battle. Constantine had been trying to decide what gods he should devote himself to, and had recalled that his father had prayed to the Christian god for help & been successful. Constantine now declared that, shortly after midday, he & some of his army had a waking vision in the skies above of a glittering cross & inscription.
   
  The following morning Constantine declared that Christ had appeared to him during sleep, had told him the meaning of the previous day’s vision, and given instructions to create a banner based on the vision to become a Standard for the army. This was created in gold, precious stones and purple cloth, called the Labarum, and carried at the head of his army. And lo! they won the battle, with the Chi-Ro at the forefront.
• 313 March: Emperor Constantine & Emperor Licinius jointly issued the Edict of Milan, which granted to all Christians the “right of open and free observance of their worship”. It was from now that the term “Catholic” began to appear within official Roman documents, and that the Roman state began to settle religious questions.
• 324: Emperor Constantine founds the city of Constantinople upon the existing city of Byzantium in an effort to “represent the integration of the East into the Roman Empire as a whole”.
• 325: Emperor Constantine calls the Council at Nicaea, which defined & endorsed the Nicene View (the Father and the Son are of one substance) over the Arian view (the Father and the Son are similar, but the Father is greater than the Son).
• 380 February 21: The Edict of Thessalonica was issued by Emperor Theodosius. It established one specific branch of Christianity as the ‘official’ religion of the Roman Empire. This branch was Nicene Christians. It thus outlawed pagan beliefs from the Empire, but it also endorsed punishment & exclusion of other christian creeds. It is from now that the Roman Catholic religion as an official function of the Roman state is a thing. This event is considered by historians to mark the end of classical antiquity (see also 476).
• 381: Emperor Theodosius calls the Council of Constantinople, which reasserted the Nicene view and rejected the Arian view.
• 390: The Gauls sack Rome.
• 407: The end of the Roman Empire in Britain: Constantine Ⅲ leads the whole of the army in Britain across the channel into Gaul to attempt to set himself up as Western Roman Emperor. The Empire was suffering major problems from all sides, and was unable to sustain it’s presence in Britain.
• 410: The Visigoths sack Rome.
• 432: Arrival of St. Patrick in Ireland from Scotland (just about every solid fact concerning St. Patrick is challenged, and that includes the precise date of this ecclesiastical arrival in Ireland).
• 449: Saxon ships carrying Angles, Saxons & Jutes plus their leaders Hengist and Horsa landed at Ebbsfleet on the Isle of Thanet in Kent (see also BCE 55). Bede & others record that this was at the invitation of Vortigern, King of the Britons, asking them to act as mercenaries to assist in fighting off Picts & Scots who had begun to predate the Britons following the departure of the Romans in 407. Bede also records that this was as successful as asking foxes to guard the chicken coop.
   
  Modern historians regard the above as mostly mythical. It starts like that because ‘Hengist’ is Old English for ‘stallion’, whilst ‘Horsa’ is Old English for ‘horse’, and both men are said to be descended from ‘Woden’ (the god that gave his name to ‘Wednesday’).
• 455: The Vandals sack Rome.
• 476: The Roman Senate sends the Imperial insignia to Constantinople following the capture of Ravenna by Germanic barbarians (see also BCE 113). This event marks the Fall of the Western Roman Empire, and is also considered by historians to mark the beginning of the Middle Ages.
   
  The Empire had been split into West & East in 286, but the nominal capital was still considered to be Rome (until this event). The actual western capital at this time was Ravenna.
• 483 March 13: The first imperial Roman Pope (#48) St. Felix Ⅲ is elevated to the Orthodox Roman Papacy.
• 525: Anno Domini / AD (“in the year of our Lord”, or currently: “common era / CE”) introduced by Scythian monk Dionysius Exiguus (c. 470 – c. 544), who used it to identify the years on his Easter table, so that he did not need to use the roman-numbering system of counting from the ascension of an emperor.
• 565: The Irish abbott Columba & 12 monks made pilgrimage from Stroove, Ireland to Iona in the Western Isles of Scotland, where they founded a monastery.
• 590
  • The Irish missionary Columbán travelled to Saint-Malo, Brittany from Leinster, Ireland with twelve other monks. They established a school at Annegray, teaching Celtic christian traditions.
  • The last imperial Roman Pope (#64) Gregory Ⅰ begins his pontificate.
     
    Gregory was an Orthodox Roman monk before his elevation to the Papacy. On one of those days he was in the marketplace and spotted some beautiful fair-haired boys for sale (they were slaves — slavery was ubiquitous throughout the world for centuries until Britain forcibly ended it in the 19ᵗʰ Century). The boys had been captured by slave-ships in their home town in Northumberland, England. Gregory resolved to become the first missionary to that far-off land. He arranged his affairs, and was 3 weeks into the journey when his permission was revoked & he was forced to return.
• 596: Pope Gregory organised a mission of 40 monks to Britain under the leadership of Augustine. They landed on the Isle of Thanet. Ethelbert, King of Kent, whose his wife was a christian, had his court at Canterbury and invited the mission to preach & live there.
• 604 September 13: Sabinian (#65) becomes the first Pope of the Orthodox Roman Church to be controlled by the Eastern Roman Empire (continues for two centuries).
• 612: Columbán travels to Italy, but St. Gall, one of the 12 companions, is ill & has to be left behind in Switzerland (or, as Miller calls it, “Helvetia”). Gall becomes a venerated hermit in the forests near Lake Constance.
• 622 July 16: Muhammad makes Hijrah (migration) to Medina from Mecca (this date is according to the Julian calendar). By 630 his strength had increased to the point that he was able to return to Mecca, cleanse the Kaaba of it’s 360 idols & devote it to the worship of Islam. Muhammad died in 632. The Caliphs of Islam went on after his death to spread Islam throughout the world at the point of a sword.
   
  Islam split almost immediately after Muhammad’s death into 2 strands:–
  1. Sunni
     (“The tradition of Muhammad”) (largest group, ~85% of all Islam)
  2. Shia
     (Ali Abi Talib is Muhammad’s successor) (largely Iran, Iraq & Azerbaijan)
• 635: The newly-crowned King Oswald of Northumbria invites the monks of Iona (see 565) to make mission to his lands. He allots Lindisfarne as a place for their monastery, and is assigned Aiden as the bishop. He & his fellow monks spread the Gospel into the northern, eastern & midland provinces of England. Augustine (see 596) was doing the same in the south & south-west of England.
• 637 Jerusalem is surrendered to Caliph Omar by Patriarch Sophronius. This was a significant part of the battles of the Rashidun Caliphate against the Byzantine Empire.
• 664: King Oswiu of Northumbria convened the Synod of Whitby to decide whether the Celtic practices that had been inherited from the monks of Iona (see 635), or the Roman practices (see 596) would be accepted within his kingdom. In both these matters, the Iona practices were identical to the Eastern Orthodox churches. Ultimately, this was going to decide whether religion in England was going to be Celtic Orthodox or Roman Orthodox. There were two main bones of contention:–
  1. Tonsure
  2. Easter
      
     Tonsure
     The Celtic monks shaved all hair from their skull from a line forward of each ear. The Roman monks shaved a circle of hair from the crown of their head.
     Easter
     The great difficulty here was that the Jews (just like the Arabs) had a calendar based on the Moon (strictly, it is Lunisolar, which means that extra months get added every couple of years to keep the months more-or-less in sync with the solar year) whereas the Western calendar was based only on the Sun. However, Easter is based on the culminating point of the ascending node of the solar ecliptic (which is the equinox — equal day & night), which timing comes solely from the Sun. That means that Passover (which is the Jewish origin for Easter) is the same date every year in the Jewish calendar & a different date each year in the Western calendar. Deciding which precise date involves complicated calculations, and the Western & Eastern churches differed in their application. Also, the Eastern Orthodox date slips more every year away from the equinox, since it does NOT take account of the Precession of the Equinox.
      
     The Synod chose Rome. In fact, large parts of the Celtic church in Ireland had also chosen the Roman method for Easter, but Iona had stuck with the original Eastern Orthodox method (which the Eastern church still uses today).
      
     In response to the decision, the Lindisfarne monks returned to Iona, and Roman Orthodoxy became triumphant throughout England.
• 711: Islamic forces of the Umayyad caliphate invade the Iberian peninsula (Portugal & Spain).
• 732 October 10: The Battle of Tours in which forces of the Umayyad caliphate are defeated in battle by Charles Martel, Duke of the Franks, and return to the Iberian peninsula. This was a crucial turning point in the struggle between Europe & Arabic forces; all historians are agreed that if the battle had gone the other way, then the pattern of European development would have been radically different.
• 793 June 8: In the 1ˢᵗ recorded Viking raids on England (in this case by Norsemen), Vikings landed on Lindisfarne, slaughtered monks & plundered their treasures.
• 794: In what turns out to be their last attack on the English mainland, a small Viking raiding party gets completely routed at Jarrow, with all leaders & crews killed. The Vikings now transfer most of their attention to raiding Scotland & Ireland.
• 800s:
  • Nottingham is one of the “‘Five Boroughs’ of the Danes” (Danelaw).
  • Pound Sterling currency is introduced during the reign of King Offa of Mercia. This is silver-based currency, and is based on 240 pennies to the Tower Pound (5,400 grains, 349.9 grams of silver). This is 12 pence makes a shilling, and 20 shillings makes a Pound (called £ s d); half-pennies & farthings also existed. This is the currency that was normal for me until my 20s & decimalisation, and a pint of the best bitter cost less than a silver shilling in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne in 1968. Naturally, the actual amount of silver in a shilling got reduced as each century passed.
• 868: King Ethelred Ⅰ and his younger brother Alfred the Great force the Danes to make peace & retreat to York.
• 875: After 8 decades of repeated raids + decision at the Synod of Whitby (see 664) the monks abandon Lindisfarne.
• 911: King Charles the Simple of France cedes Normandy to Rollo, one of the Viking raiders that have used the Seine as passage for their ships to attack France. Rollo is great-great-great-grandfather of William the Bastard.
• 924: First Hethbeth bridge constructed (original Trent Bridge) by King Edward the Elder, who also fortified the town with a wall.
• 1066
  • January 5: Death of the Anglo-Saxon king, and last of the House of Wessex, Edward the Confessor. Aged 60, his death was probably from a stroke.
  • January 6: The Witan select Harold Godwinson to be crowned & that occurs immediately; he is the last Anglo-Saxon king of England.
  • January: William the Bastard, who is descended from the Viking invaders of France (see 911), desires the English throne and begins to build 700 warships and transports at Dives-sur-Mer on the Normandy coast. King Harold assembles an army on the Isle of Wight to wait for them.
  • September 8: The Norwegian (Viking) King Harald Sigurdsson, who claims the English throne, lands with his army at the mouth of the Tyne. They defeat local forces & march south.
  • September 12: William sets sail for England, but storms sink many ships & force him to seek shelter.
  • September 25: After a 4-day forced-march north with his army, King Harold surprises the Norwegian King at Stamford Bridge, engages them immediately, and defeats and kills most of the invaders.
  • September 27: William sets sail from Saint-Valery-sur-Somme and arrives at Pevensey the following day.
  • October 14: Harold & William battle at Senlac Hill; after 9 hours of continuous fighting the Anglo-Saxon forces are defeated and Harold and his brothers Gyrth & Leofwine are killed. After this point William the Bastard begins to style himself as William the Conqueror.
• 1068
  • William the Conqueror orders building of a Royal Castle (wiki); this would have been full motte & bailey with all the trimmings, though in wood, built on the then-barren Castle Rock which overlooks The Meadows & The Park; council Conservation areas are in place for all 3. The Castle’s wooden structure was replaced with a stone structure during the reign of King Henry Ⅱ.
     
    Main items within the Castle timeline:–
    • 1068: Start Date
    • 1194: Battle: King Richard Ⅰ (‘Lionheart’) & Prince John
    • 1252: Start Date for Castle Gatehouse
    • 1330: Mortimer’s Hole
    • 1346: King David Ⅱ of Scotland held prisoner
    • 1403 — 1437: Queen Joan in residence
    • 1461: Edward Ⅳ proclaims himself King
    • 1485: Richard Ⅲ departs towards a car-park in Leicester
    • 1623: Sold to Earl of Rutland
    • 1642: Civil War: Charles Ⅰ plants his standard
    • 1651: Destroyed by Parliament
    • 1674: Cavendish buys ruins, builds new Castle
    • 1768: Holles dies, Castle is abandoned
    • 1831: Reform Riots: trashed & burned by mob
    • 1832: Duke takes the money & runs
    • 1876: Burnt-out shell rebuilt
    • 1969: Castle Conservation Area declared
• 1086
  • Domesday Book records Nottingham as ‘Snotingeham’ and ‘Snotingham’ with 165 households. I certainly agree with this — Nottingham folks can be extremely snotty in my experience. I came here in the 1980s & my nose runs most every day since arriving.
  • Domesday Book records the Manor of Clifton:– “one priest, one church, a population of 33”. A council Conservation area was put in place for this in 1969 & extended in 1997; there is a pdf available.
  • Sneinton is recorded in the Domesday Book as 11 households.
• 1000s late (date uncertain): The Park created as a deer park; stocked by deer from Sherwood Forest (which, at that time, came right up to Nottingham border within Clay Field); for four centuries the Castle was the Kings’ principal residence in the Midlands; there was a substantial fishpond in The Park (only the street-name survives).
• 1100: Start Date for St Peter’s Church, St Peters Gate (Grade Ⅰ listed).
• 1140: The town is almost destroyed by fire.
• 1153: A second attempt to destroy the town with fire.
• 1155: Henry Ⅱ granted Nottingham a Royal Charter.
• 1156: Second Hethbeth (Heath-beth, or Heck-beck) bridge started; >20 stone arches.
• 1158 Henry Ⅱ switched the currency from the 99.9% fine silver that had previously been used since the 800s to 92.5% sterling silver. Sterling Silver was much harder-wearing, and therefore the new coins lasted for much longer.
• 1169: Norman invasion of Ireland.
• 1177: Pope Adrian Ⅳ (#169) endorses the Norman Invasion of Ireland by creating the Lordship of Ireland for Henry Ⅱ, destroying the ancient High Kingship of Ireland in the process.
   
  Adrian Ⅳ is the only English Pope, and is notorious for having given Ireland to Henry Ⅱ. In addition, even the Papal Bull (‘Laudabiliter’) involved is notorious, since no copy of it is extant. There are lots of early references to it, but the document itself is gone.
• 1180: St Peter’s Church, St Peters Gate (Grade Ⅰ listed) rebuilt following a fire, plus continuous rebuilds ever since.
• 1189: Start Date for Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem, Brewhouse Yard (Grade Ⅱ listed). A splendid pub with many rock-cut nooks & rooms at the rear. Good food & beer, too!
• 1190: Start Date for St Mary the Virgin Church, Holgate, Clifton (Grade Ⅰ listed) + Churchyard Walls & Gateway (Grade Ⅱ listed)

• 1194: Battle at the Castle between King Richard Ⅰ (‘Lionheart’) & supporters of Prince John, including the Sheriff of Nottingham. Yup, those guys. This is indeed supposed to be history, and the battle lasted just a few days with victory for Richard (it was the “Sheriff of Nottinghamshire”, since Nottingham did not have a sheriff at that time).

• Details:– 1200 to 1399
• Details:– 1400 to 1599
• Details:– 1600 to 1799
• Details:– 1800 to 1899
• Details:– 1900 to current